Monday, January 11, 2010

Divinity 2 - Fini`

And so it comes to an end. 40+ hours of gameplay, and I have come to the conclusion of Divinity 2.

Was it worth it? Yes. Even with the horrid ending that if you watch Japanese movies or Anime and know how they end, then welcome to the end of Div 2.
I do not wish to give away anymore at this point. But, I do want to talk for a moment on Div 2 and a few other news tidbits.

First off, what compelled me most about Divinity 2? The variety of things I needed to do was one factor. The non-hand holding and difficulty also helped.

I really enjoy games that make me feel like it is life or death, but I have a way to survive if I keep on my toes. For example, the ending fight in Div 2 was truly outrageous, but was survivable if you learned some tricks to stay alive. That is key to an action game for me.
The non-hand holding is a far cry from most of our MMO's (except LOTRO, where the obtuse questing just becomes frustrating). But, I think MMO's need to have that feature due to the size and scope of those games. Divinity 2 with the open world to explore mechanic, where the world is finite?...that helps give me a sense of adventure (adventurer?) yet completion as well.

The variety of things to do really got crazy. The enchanting of armor, charms you could apply, crafting of potions, and even controlling your own pet that you built (a necromantic skill) really just made it crazy deciding how to build, rebuild, shape and setup my character.
Variety was also key to your own classing. YOU controlled what you wished to do ...from heals, to tanking, DPS and defense, summoning, ranger attributes...and more.

The game was not easy, and I finally had reached a point in one puzzle that I needed to look it up...and THAT was it. All the other puzzles had enough of a learn curve to make it hard to do, but possible. That difficulty factor if you will is what was key to my fun. Same for fights, with tricky ways to complete some of these (boss fights mainly), but not impossible.

I like that.

There is no doubt there were gaping holes in plot, bugs to deal with, as seems to be par for course now for all software titles. But, they were not enough to make me stop.

That is the sign of fun to me.

And patches are still being developed, that it could warrant a second play through to find some things I missed along the way (I had to leave one zone with 3 locked chests I could never open...wonder how to get into those?).
It was an awesome time, and I felt that nostalgia I felt from The Witcher, Fable 2, etc.

It was just plain gaming fun.

Now, before I leave, just some news of note.

First off, the "Family who MMO's together" has been on hiatus. Thanks to several issues with EQ2 that caused us to lose interest, we just never logged back in. This to me felt like a bad sign.
We never stopped playing Age of Conan with the concerns there. Why? Because we at least could continue to play and have fun.
When EQ2 had multiple days of "unannounced" downtimes during the holiday period (where we really like to play a lot), this caused quite a stir.
We lost our son to the Xbox, and I started playing single player games. My wife lost interest due to the multiple issues she had (loss of claimable items, no rewards for a special quest and of course the outage that blocked her one time, after my son and myself got in...), and as she stated, the game "disappointed" her. She just was not happy about logging in again.

I feel that way when people or things let me down as well.

So, we wait. For what, we are not sure.

Age of Conan is of course our game of choice. But, Funcom is TRULY quite slow when it comes to development, and STILL no patch, no fixes...nothing for several months. This just keeps the game on our "wish it was better list".
We have time cards ready to go, and will most likely start again after patch 1.06. But, when that will hit, we do not know.
The news today though is the first step for "merges" are taking place. This also comes with a doozy of a side note: Anyone who has not played for the last 7 months and has a character level 21 or under...will be due for deletion.
This also makes me wonder just how bad things will be after merge? Loss of items, characters...CITIES?

A nailbiter there.

Well, that is enough rambling for now. As a final little goodbye, I wish to let everyone know I went back to Dragon Age and I am giving it another shot. The chattiness was getting to me, and I started to lose interest. But, now with Divinity 2 done, and no other MMO ready to go, lets see how it feels now.
I played about two hours this morning and had fun...so that is a start eh?